Time.news – “A Requiem that challenges the impossible to tell the world that we are alive”. Riccardo Muti presents the symphonic-choral masterpiece by Giuseppe Verdi, composed on the wave of emotion for the death of Alessandro Manzoni, a poet much loved by the composer, and performed by Verdi himself for the first time in 1874 to commemorate the writer one year after his death. The Requiem, conducted by the Maestro on March 27 at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, will be broadcast in streaming on April 18 at 8pm.
It was fifty years since Muti had not led the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Massimo, and today he announces that he wants to do it again, but with an audience in flesh and blood, ears and sensations.
“I discovered a theater in very good shape – he said – an excellent orchestra, an excellent choir, prepared by Maestro Visco, and an extremely professional, classy environment, worthy of the great Sicilian tradition. I carry out most of my activity abroad , between Chicago, Vienna, Salzburg, and returning after many years to a theater in the South, one of the largest in the world, so in excellent shape, pushes me to the possibility of a return to the Teatro Massimo to make music for the public in attendance, probably with an opera, for the first time in Palermo. Streaming is fine temporarily but we absolutely have to go back to live theater, as it has been passed down to us for millennia“.
© Teatro Massimo of Palermo
Riccardo Muti
During the week spent at the Teatro Massimo, from 21 to 27 March, Muti received the honorary citizenship of Palermo. Considered the greatest living interpreter of Giuseppe Verdi’s music, Muti conducted the Requiem with a cast of leading soloists, starting with Francesco Meli, one of the most acclaimed Italian tenors, increasingly present on the stages of the main opera houses of the world; the Lebanese soprano Joyce El-Khouri, who grew up between Canada and the United States; and again the mezzo-soprano Martina Belli, who returns to the Teatro Massimo after having interpreted the Maddalena del Rigoletto directed by John Turturro in 2018; finally, the bass Riccardo Zanellato, winner of the Oscar della Lirica 2019 with a career that has seen him establish himself as one of the main reference artists of the Verdi repertoire. The concert will be available online for sixty days.
At its debut in Brera in 1874, the Requiem Mass was so successful that after the first performance three more were held at the Teatro alla Scala. Although he never made a secret of his atheist and proudly anticlerical vision, Verdi with the Requiem composed a great masterpiece of sacred music, rich in religious sentiments and full of great spirituality, which, confronting the mystery of death, evokes philosophical reflections on the meaning of life.
The text is divided into seven major sections: Requiem and Kyrie, the terrifying and reiterated Dies irae, Domine Jesu, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Lux aeterna, and Libera me which concludes the Requiem with the poignant prayer “Libera me Domine de morte aeterna” , but as the musicologist Massimo Mila writes, quoted in the hall program (downloadable for free from the Teatro Massimo website), “the Requiem Mass consists mainly of the Dies Irae, with its Michelangelo nightmare of the final judgment“. In fact” in the Dies Irae it is the whole human race that […] he collapses electrocuted, like game shot down by a sudden shotgun ball, passing all of a sudden from the heat of a very intense life to the freezing cold of death “.
The concert will be streamed on the WebTv of the Teatro Massimo (www.teatromassimo.it) and on the Foundation’s YouTube channel. The use is free but, for those who want, it is You can make a donation via credit cards or PayPal.
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